6
The Butte de Warlencourt
THREE DAYS AFTER their relief in Delville Wood, the South African brigade marched to Maricourt, where they were transferred by train to Hengest. They arrived in the Frévillers area, north of the main road between Arras and Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise, on 27 July 1916. The first priority was to reorganise the brigade – drafts numbering 40 officers and 2 826 men of other ranks had been sent from Bordon during July.1
One of these newcomers was Frederick Barratt (2nd Regiment, C Company), who had originally travelled to South Africa from England in 1901 during the Anglo-Boer War with the intention of teaching. He ended up doing blockhouse duty near Cradock with the Grahamstown Volunteers instead.
Barratt’s group had left their training camp at Rouen by train. When they got closer to the front, they alighted and marched the rest of the way, spending a night at Happy Valley, near Bray-sur-Somme. The next morning, they were joined by the ragged remnants of the men who had fought at Delville Wood. In due course they were transported by train to Estrée-Cauchy, north-west of Arras. As it was peaceful compared to what they had been through, the men renamed it ‘Extra Cushy’. Barratt recalled those few weeks as ‘a time of resting, doing a bit of training, eating French bread, wandering through the cornfields, spending evenings in estaminets and quarrelling over pickled onions’.2
With the horrors and trauma of the battles of Longueval and Delville Wood behind them, the 9th Division left the Somme and was transferred from the XIII Corps of the Fourth Army to the IV Corps of Sir Charles Monro’s First Army. The IV Corps was commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Wilson.
Monro inspected the South African brigade on 5 August. At that stage, it numbered 62 officers and 2 523 men. A week later, at Frévillers, they were honoured with a visit from King George V.
By mid-August, the brigade was regarded as sufficiently rested and reorganised to once again take its place on the front line. On 23 August, they took over the Berthonval and Carency sections of the Vimy area from the 26th Brigade. The Germans held the crown of Vimy Ridge, while the British line ran along its western slopes. Various regiments of the South African brigade held the first-line trenches along Vimy Ridge until 23 September. The weather was abominable for most of that time – during the last few days of the action at Vimy Ridge, thanks to perpetual rain, the men stood in almost a metre of water surrounded by crumbling trench parapets.3
On 29 August, Barratt recorded that they had stayed in the village of Camblain-l’Abbé for four to five days and had a ‘very wet and slippery march’ to the trenches for working-party duties. And while 31 August was ‘a miserable wet cheerless day’, they had been ‘literally washed out’ of their dug-out the previous day due to a thunderstorm.4
While Vimy Ridge had seen some ferocious battles in the summer of 1915, now it was a relatively quiet area. The most action the South Africans saw there was when parties from B and D companies of the 2nd Regiment raided the German trenches on the night of 13 September. Led by Lieutenants Percy Lilburn (wounded at Delville Wood) and F.G. Walsh, the raiders managed to reach the German side of the British wire without being observed. Covered by their artillery, the men doubled across no-man’s-land and jumped into the German trenches, bombing dug-outs and taking prisoners. They killed at least a dozen enemy soldiers and took five prisoners, and suffered only two casualties themselves.5
Barratt recalled the days in the trenches and the night of the raid in his diary:
Have had spell of a week now in reserve trenches: mostly trench-repairing work, shifting sandbags (3 shifts: 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.: 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.: 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.) Creighton, Cullis and [name indecipherable] are all on the night shift and sleep all day. I have been most of the time on light duty and have had a soft time, my only duties being connected with sanitation. Rations have been rather low and parcels from home welcome. Fritz has bombarded us at intervals, and a good many casualties. Last night quite successful raid on German front line – result 5 prisoners, and 7 killed [in actual fact, it was more than that]. Our losses one killed [name indecipherable] (whom I knew very well) and one wounded. We had to get up before 4 and hold ourselves in readiness – very cold morning. Shelling very heavy. Trench mortars etc – showers of shrapnel. Comparatively few hit.6
On 23 September, the South African brigade was relieved. Two days later they moved to a new training area with the Third Army, and on 5 October the 9th Division was restored to the Fourth Army. By now, the autumn rains had started to fall, and men and machines struggled to make their way to their destinations in the soggy countryside. An obviously anxious Barratt recorded:
We left Vimy Ridge on the 18th expecting to go into billets, have hot bath etc. Instead we are moved back to reserve trenches where crowded into a wretched rat-run of a shelter. Cannot sleep for rats running over us. Washing almost impossible. Very heavy rain. Nearly all dugouts washed out. My place fortunately dry. Daily fatigues navvy work repairing trenches. My boots give in. Have to wear canoes size 12. Fetch wet shirts at night. Fall into ditch. Improvement in rations … Moving off today to billets at Gouy Servins. Have blankets to carry in addition to other kit. Still rather fed up with the youths with whom one has to mix, but they are at any rate intelligent and observant and make excellent scouts. We are wondering what is to be our fate for the winter. Heaven send it be not the trenches of Flanders!7
On 7 October the South Africans marched south to the Somme, and the following day, in the pouring rain, they relieved the 141st Brigade of the 47th (1/2nd London) Division in Mametz Wood. Like Delville, the wood was now a bleak, desolate place. On 9 October they moved to High Wood, where they took over from the 142nd Brigade. The 9th Division was now side by side with the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division and part of General Pulteney’s III Corps.8
Since the Battle of Delville Wood, General Haig had taken first Pozières and the high ground at Mouquet Farm, and then Guillemont and Ginchy on the other flank, making the gap in the second enemy line 12 kilometres wide, and giving the Allies the highest ground from which direct observation over the slopes and pockets to the east was possible.
Lieutenant Jack Drummond, a South African serving with the Australians, had taken part in the Battle of Pozières. In a letter to his sister in Plumstead, Cape Town, on 28 July 1916, he wrote:
Last night we came up to this inferno, made a bit of a headquarters, and sent our guns up, some to the firing line about a mile away. Our guns of all calibres were belching forth their shells from left and right, front and rear, and we trying to get up in the pitch dark, falling into trenches and millions of shell holes. The din is continuous and terrific, and the flashes blinding. To make things worse we had several gas alarms and had to put on our gas helmets … Some artillery men say this beats Verdun … The country here is absolutely ploughed up, both from our shells and theirs. The roads leading up to the front trenches are absolutely shrapnel-swept all day and night.9
By 3 September, the Allies between Thiepval and Estrées were facing the German third line, which was based on a string of fortified villages lying on the reverse slopes of the main ridge – namely Courcelette, Martinpuich, Flers, Lesboeufs and Morval. Behind it lay an intermediate line, with strong points at Le Sars, Eaucourt l’Abbaye and Gueudecourt. Further back, a new fourth line covered the villages of Sailly-Saillisel and Le Transloy, and protected Bapaume.
By now the Germans had been considerably weakened, in part due to changes in the German High Command, and the time was ripe for a new attack to accelerate their decline and reposition the British front. To the right, the French had had some notable successes: the Austro-German forces were being pinned down on the Eastern Front; General Maurice Sarrail had launched an offensive in the Balkans; and Romania had entered the war.
Haig’s aim was to break through the German third line and ultimately advance north-east across the upper Ancre River to get behind the enemy positions from Thiepval northward. On 15 September he struck to Ginchy from a point south-east of Thiepval, with a force consisting of Canadians and New Zealanders who were new to the Somme. Also new to the area was the use of British tanks, which Captain D.H. Pegler, then a battery sergeant-major with the Royal Field Artillery, remarked on:
I have forgotten the ‘Land Crabs’ – the great armoured cars that took part in the battle of the fifteenth – some are lying on their backs, mangled masses of twisted and broken iron, others are back in their repairing yards, all are more or less crocked, but Gad the execution they did was awful. It struck me as I saw them from the corner of Leuze Wood how symbolic of all war they were. Then one saw them creeping along at about four miles an hour, taking all obstacles as they came, spluttering death with all their guns, enfilading each trench as they came to it – and crushing beneath them our own dead and dying as they passed. I saw one body on a concrete parapet over which one had passed. This body was just a splash of blood and clothing about two feet wide and perhaps an inch thick. An hour before this thing had been a thinking breathing man, with life before him and loved ones awaiting him probably somewhere in Scotland, for he was a kiltie. Nothing stops these cars, trees bend and break, boulders are pressed into the earth. One had been hit by a large shell and the petrol tank pierced. She lay on her side in flames, a picture of hopelessness but every gun on her uppermost side still working with dogged determination. The firing gradually slackened and she lay silent, the gallant little crew burned to death each man at his gun.10
In just one day, Haig had advanced to an average depth of 1.6 kilometres on a front of more than 10 kilometres. He took Courcelette, Martinpuich and Flers, and, on 25 September, Morval, Lesboeufs and Gueudecourt. On 26 September, the right wing of Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army carried Thiepval and the whole of the crest. Allied fortunes on the Western Front looked brighter, but soon after the attack on the 26th the weather broke. October saw a succession of violent gales and pounding rains.11 Buchan would record:
Now appeared the supreme difficulty of trench warfare. For three months the Allies had been slowly advancing, blasting attack, and the result was that the fifty square miles of old battleground which lay behind their front lines had been tortured out of recognition. The little country roads had been wholly destroyed, and, since they never had much of a bottom, the road-menders had nothing to build upon. New roads were hard to make, for the chalky soil had been so churned up by shelling that it had lost all cohesion. In all the area there were but two good highways, and by the third month of the battle even these showed signs of wear. The consequence was that there were now two No Man’s Lands – one between the front lines, and one between the old enemy front and the front we had won. The second was the bigger problem, for across it must be brought the supplies of a great army. It was a war of motor transport, and we were doing what the early Victorians had pronounced impossible – running the equivalent of steam engines not on prepared tracks but on high-roads, running them day and night in endless relays. The problem was difficult enough in fine weather, but when the rain came it turned the whole land into a morass. Every road became a watercourse, and in the hollows the mud was as deep as a man’s thighs. The army must be fed, troops must be relieved, guns must be supplied, so there could be no slackening of the traffic. Off the roads the ground was one vast bog, dug-outs crumbled in, and communication trenches ceased to be. Behind the British front lay six miles of sponge, varied by mud torrents. It was into such miserable warfare, under persistent rain in a decomposing land, that the South African Brigade was now flung.12
The line of the Fourth Army ran southward from a point north-east of Courcelette, along the foot of what the British Expeditionary Force had come to know as the Thiepval–Morval Ridge, to High Wood. From this ridge, a series of spurs jutted eastward into the hollow, one of which was the Butte de Warlencourt, an ancient burial ground immediately west of Flers. The German fourth line lay below the eastern edge of this spur. While the spurs themselves were not part of the main German front, they were held as intermediate positions, as every advantage was taken of sunken roads, ruins and undulations in the countryside. And until they were conquered, no general assault on the main German front could be undertaken. The Butte de Warlencourt in particular would also provide cover for the British forces and their advanced gun positions, as well as protection for supplies moving to the front.
By October 1916, ‘the Butte de Warlencourt had become an obsession. Everybody wanted it. It loomed large in the minds of the soldiers in the forward area and they attributed many of their misfortunes to it. The newspaper correspondents talked about “that miniature Gibraltar”.’13 So said 24-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Roland Bradford.14
During that month, various British divisions circulated through the trenches overlooked by the Butte de Warlencourt. An attack on the butte was made on 7 October, when the 23rd Division took Le Sars on the Albert–Bapaume road. A week earlier, the 50th and 47th divisions had taken the Flers line, the strong trench system north of Destremont Farm, and the ruined abbey of Eaucourt. With the attack on Le Sars, however, the 47th Division, on the right of the 23rd, failed to reach the butte. The two divisions were eventually relieved by the 15th and 9th, with orders to carry the butte and the German intermediate line.
On 9 October, the 2nd South African Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel E. Christian and numbering 20 officers and 578 other ranks, took over the portion of the front line to be held by the brigade. During the night, the South Africans brought in a number of the wounded of the outgoing 141st Brigade.
The South African brigade was now on the left of the 9th Division, its boundary running through the ruins of Eaucourt l’Abbaye, beyond which the 26th Brigade held the front, with the 27th Brigade in divisional reserve. B and C companies of the 2nd South Africans held the front line, together with two strong posts on their left and right fronts. A and D companies were in the support trenches of the old Flers line running along the south-west side of Eaucourt l’Abbaye. The German front trenches, known as Snag and Tail, lay just short of a kilometre from the British front line, and beyond them – running through the Butte de Warlencourt – was the main German intermediate position. Due to the confused fighting and rains of the past weeks, the whole front on both sides was indeterminate, and at any one moment it was unsure which trenches were held by the Germans and which by the British. The first task for the Allies was to clear the ground up to the butte to get directly in front of the German fourth position.
The 2nd South Africans’ first orders were to link up the two aforementioned strong posts with the ruins of an old mill to the left of their front, but the slow pace of the relief postponed this to the second night when about 500 metres of trench were dug. Despite heavy shelling during 10 and 11 October, their casualties were small. On the 11th, General Furse issued orders for a daylight attack the following day in conjunction with the 26th Brigade on their right and the 44th Brigade of the 15th Division on their left. The attack was to be carried out on a one-regiment front by the 2nd and 4th South Africans (the 2nd leading), with the 3rd and 1st in reserve. They had two objectives: the enemy trenches Snag and Tail, and the main intermediate line through the Butte de Warlencourt.
In drizzling rain on 12 October, the 2nd South Africans crossed the parapets, closely followed by the 4ths under Major Donald Hunt. A tremendous German barrage wiped out the telephone wires to the front line and for some time no reports could be received. To make matters worse, the mist, combined with the smoke that the brigade had laid down around the butte and which was now drifting in their direction, made it impossible to see any distance. The German machine guns caught them at long range across the gentle slope of the field, and before the first objective – Snag and Tail – was reached, the assault faltered.
In the afternoon, Captain Thomas Ross of the 4th South Africans sent a message to General Lukin that he and some details of the 2nd were holding a line of shell-holes and a shallow trench halfway between the old front line and Snag and Tail. He also reported that a company of the 4th Regiment was positioned in front of them near Snag and Tail, with a part of the 2nd farther forward. Having already sent forward a company of the 3rd Regiment to hold the old front line, Lukin ordered two officers’ patrols from the company to investigate. Their report-back was disheartening: the brigade was nowhere near its first objective. As the now disorganised 2nd and 4th regiments had already suffered heavily, Lukin ordered the 3rd to relieve them and moved the 1st up in support. By just after dawn on 13 October, the 2nd and 4th regiments had been brought back to High Wood.
Later that day it was discovered that Lieutenants Pearse and Donaldson, and about 60 men were dug in at an exposed point near the German line. Thanks to a reconnaissance by Lieutenant Cruddas, their exact position was ascertained and they were brought back to safety that evening. A new trench, afterwards known as Pearse’s Trench, was dug from the old line to the point which he had held, and made a jumping-off point for future operations.15
Barratt’s diary gives insight into this terrible experience:
October 13. My 39th birthday yesterday. By a miracle I am still alive. Had enough the last two days of the horror of war to last a lifetime. October 10. Came off guard and put on party shifting dead bodies out of trench. Then a ration fatigue. Finally to bed in dugout. October 11. Van Reenen hit twice by shell. I propping him up when hit second time. Died that evening. Shelling of trench continues. Men hit every few minutes. Spent day in dugout. That evening went out digging an advance trench from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. German sniping. Back to dugout at 6 a.m.
(October 12) No water. Orders to fall in at 12 ready to go over top. Rifles damaged by shell. Fleming hit in leg. Cullis bandaging him hit in back. Parade mustered 20 in platoon 11, 7 in platoon 12. Just before went over shell knocked Creighton and me over unhurt and buried Joubert (taken back with shell shock). Went over at 2.5. I between Treloar and Creighton. Just as I stood on the parapet and was jumping down was hit and fell over, rifle falling away. Crawled into shell hole and eventually decided had not lost my head, but found difficulty in walking. Pitched my shovel off and found I had wound at back of neck. After a time made a dash and got back into trench. Found Sergt Tayfield who had fallen and come back without wounds. Other wounded men came back over trench. Lay in trench for some hours amid continuous fire. Saw some wounded men going along to dressing station and went with them. Went along trenches for miles. Great difficulty in moving on, over corpses etc. After hours emerged on road and then started on long walk along road. Great relief to be out of reach of shells. Had a lift in a wagon and another in motor van and eventually reached Divisional Dressing Station, helping wounded men along the road: one man with eye gone got on horseback. Arrangements at Dressing Station wonderful and all doctors ambulance men very kind. Gave us lots of cocoa and bread and butter and cheese. Then sent on to casualty clearing station. Then had the first proper night’s sleep for a long time. Following day put in train with ticket tied to my pocket. Possibly wound not so slight as I had thought.16
Early on the night of 14 October, B Company of the 3rd Regiment, under Captain Sprenger, was sent to reconnoitre the Pimple, one of the two German strong points, which was subsequently garrisoned by a party under Lieutenant Medlicott. A short while later, Lieutenant Mallett entered the trench at the Pimple and moved towards Snag and Tail, bombing the enemy until he was driven back by machine-gun fire and severely wounded. But a party under Lieutenants Harris and Estill forged ahead, and succeeded in taking and holding considerable parts of the trenches. That night the place was heavily bombed by Germans, but the garrison of B Company held the Pimple and captured trenches until relieved by A Company the following night. During the operation, Medlicott was killed and Sprenger and Mallett wounded, though the latter later died of his wounds. There were 35 other casualties. On the night of 16 October, the 3rd Regiment retired to the support line, while the 1st, under Lieutenant-Colonel Dawson, took its place.17
In the meantime, the communication trench between the Pimple and the front line and back to Flers had been widened and deepened. On 17 October, orders arrived for an attack early the next day on the same objectives that had been unsuccessfully targeted on the 12th. All that evening and most of that night, heavy rain fell, so that the trenches and parapets were ‘mere undulations in a quagmire’.18
By 03:40, the three attacking companies of the 1st Regiment were formed up in no-man’s-land. With C Company on the left, B Company in the centre and A on the right, they began their advance, the men disappearing in the rain. News came through several hours later that C Company, under Captain Jenkins, had been held up by wire in front of the German line and had been heavily bombed from the trenches, the leading platoon almost entirely shot down. An officer and six men of the following platoon managed to enter the German trench, but also fell immediately. Realising the hopelessness of their chances of success, a wounded Captain Jenkins ordered the company sergeant-major to withdraw the survivors to their original line. Of the 100 men of C Company who went out, 69 became casualties.19
A and B companies fared even worse. Advancing rapidly, they had entered Snag but the B Company commander, Captain Whiting, was mortally wounded halfway across. Heavily battered by shell fire, the trench outlines had become obscured and, failing to realise that they had reached their objective, the companies continued beyond it. Some 500 metres to their right were Highlanders of the 26th Brigade, but the Germans were filtering in between them and their old front, and only Lieutenant Stapleton with a few men succeeded in making it back. Two officers and 16 others were taken prisoner; the rest of the men of A and B companies were dead.20
Lieutenant-Colonel W.D. Croft of the 9th Division recalled: ‘One saw a large party of South Africans at full stretch with bayonets at the charge – all dead; but even in death they seemed to have the battle ardour stamped on their faces.’21
At daybreak, Major Ormiston, who was in charge of the troops on the Pimple, made an attempt to bomb along the trench leading to the junction of the Snag and Tail trenches (known as the Nose by the British), but the attack broke down under machine-gun fire. A company of the 3rd Regiment, under Captain Langdale, was moved forward to the front line and put at Dawson’s disposal, and a company of the 4th was sent to replace it in the support line. Langdale took up position in Pearse’s Trench and sent out a patrol to look for A and B companies, which returned in the afternoon with no information. It was now apparent that C Company had failed with heavy losses and that A and B companies had disappeared.
It was obvious to Dawson that the key enemy position was the Nose. He had been asking all day for its bombardment, but because of difficulties with communications, the guns were firing at the wrong point. He ordered another attack at 17:45 – D Company of his own 1st Regiment would attack from the Pimple, and Captain Langdale’s company of the 3rd Regiment would advance from Pearse’s Trench.
The trenches, however, were now almost impassable, so Langdale set out with just one platoon and two Lewis gun teams. He moved along Snag Trench to the right for some 180 metres, established a block with a Lewis gun and then moved west to a point near the Nose, but came upon three German machine guns. Regarding the posts too strong to attack, he withdrew to the original front line. At the same time, the bombing attack from the Pimple had also failed.22
On Dawson’s orders, Captain Langdale reoccupied Snag Trench on the morning of 19 October. B Company of the 4th Regiment, under Captain Ross, was also sent forward with orders to make a renewed attack on the crucial Nose. They reached the front line early in the morning, but at about 05:00 the Germans attacked with bombs and flame-throwers. The men were driven out and there were heavy casualties in Ross’s company. Ross himself was wounded and Lieutenant Alexander Young, who had been wounded at Delville Wood, was killed. Snag and Tail were still firmly held by the Germans.
In another desperate attempt, C Company of the 3rd Regiment, under Lieutenant Harold Elliott, was sent to enter Snag Trench and make contact with the 26th Brigade on their right, and then to work their way towards the Nose, driving out the enemy. The company entered Snag without difficulty, but failed to advance towards the Nose, apparently owing to insufficient bombs. Beyond the Nose, Major Ormiston was waiting to attack as soon as support from the east showed up, but the situation had become hopeless. Dawson had not a single officer or man fit to send to the front line, while the mud was so thick that rifles, machine guns, and Lewis guns were constantly jamming. Among the little party on the Pimple, there was not one rifle that could be fired. In some trenches, the mud lay a metre deep, so that the wounded had to be dug out at once before they suffocated. That night, Dawson and his men were relieved by the 6th King’s Own Scottish Borderers of the 27th Brigade. By the morning of 20 October, all were back in High Wood.23
In summing up the battle for the Butte de Warlencourt, Buchan identified all the problems that faced the 9th Division and the South African brigade, and the reasons for their failure:
The enemy held his ground with admirable skill and resolution. The fighting had not the swift pace and the obvious successes of the earlier battles. We were striving for minor objectives, and such a task lacks the impetus and exhilaration of a great combined assault. Often the action resolved itself into isolated struggles, a handful of men in a mudhole holding out till their post was linked up with our main front. Rain, cold, slow reliefs, the absence of hot food, and often of any food at all, made those episodes a severe test of endurance and devotion. So awful was the mud that each stretcher required eight bearers, and at the end battalion runners, though carrying no arms or equipment, took from four to six hours to cover the thousand odd yards between the front line and battalion headquarters. To show the utter exhaustion of the troops, at High Wood after the relief many men were found lying fast asleep without overcoats or blankets, and stiff with frost. To add to their discomfort, there was a perpetual and inevitable confusion of mind. The front was never at any one moment clearly defined, and officers led and men followed in a cruel fog of uncertainty. Such fighting could not be other than costly. In the ten days from the 9th to the 19th October the South African casualties were approximately 1,150, including 45 officers, 16 of whom were killed.24
On 21 October, with the exception of the 3rd Regiment, which stayed in High Wood in reserve to the 27th Brigade, the South Africans moved to Mametz Wood. Two days later they were informed that they would be in reserve for the 9th Division’s attack on 25 October, but this order was later cancelled and the entire division was taken out of the line. At the end of October, the 9th Division moved to the area south of the Doullens–Arras road, and became part of Major-General Aylmer Haldane’s VI Corps of the Third Army.
On 5 November, an all-out effort to capture the butte was undertaken by the 7th, 8th and 9th (Durham Light Infantry) battalions of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division in appalling conditions. Despite heavy casualties, the 9th Durhams managed to take it, only to be driven off by German counterattacks. The Butte de Warlencourt remained under German control throughout 1916, and it was only after the German retirement to the Hindenburg Line in February 1917 that the butte passed into British hands.25